Lucky handles a novel theme

Award winning actor, director Lucky Dias' latest directorial venture "Shaun" a miniplay featuring a child who has exceptional power to foresee the future is sure to be an exceptional treat for the Sri Lankan teledrama audience. Woven around an IT whizz kid with extraordinary talent and is highly intelligent though handicapped, a hero who can pull the heartstrings of the viewersm, is to be telecast every Sunday on the 7.30 pm belt on ITN channel starting from today.

The child actor Chameera Dharmakeerthi stars as Shaun while the rest of the cast in the twenty six episode teledrama stars Lucky Dias, Nihal Fernando, Ananda Wickramage, Vinnie Weththasinghe, Sanoja Bibile, Rinsley Weeraratne, Nilanthi Dias, Anusha Damayanthi, Susil Perera, Manel Wanaguru, Nimal Anthony, Neetha Samaranayake and Indika Ginige.

Eleven-year-old Shaun wheel chair bound, is unable to walk and his sight is weak. His extraordinary IT knowledge and his unique ability to foretell the future endears him to one and all.

Shaun's father, Cedric, a billionaire is a world-renowned diamond dealer. He owns several companies. Shaun attends an International School in Colombo and one day, the young boy suddenly as it were out of the blues gets up from his wheel chair and is able to walk unaided for a few minutes. This is witnessed by Peter a lecturer at the school who reports this amazing incident to the Principal. The Principal decides that Peter is delusional and is suffering from a mental breakdown. Whilst Peter is admitted to a psychiatric ward to have his mental status assessed Peter insists that he saw Shaun walking. He throws the challenge that if the Principal too happens to witness the same, the Principal too should be admitted to the Psychiatric ward.

It so happens that the Principal too sees Shaun walking and he is admitted to the psychiatric ward. At this point both Peter and the Principal are terminated from their jobs. They start envying Shaun.

One day one of Shaun's classmates is caught with a toy rubber snake and the new principal confiscates it and places it in the digital safe in the school. Shaun who is an expert on IT opens the safe with ease but gets caught in the act. The next day the news breaks in the media highlighting Shaun's talent and he is named as "Safe Boy".

When this story reaches Denzil a colleague of Cedric, he hatches up a plan with his girl friend Angela. The two conspire to get Shaun to open the digital safe of Cedric's Diamond factory.

In the meantime Cedric plans to remarry. The woman he marries is named Rosy, a divorcee who pretends to have a young daughter called Shani.

While Denzil is planning to break Cedric's diamond safe and Cedric making arrangements for his second marriage, the minplay takes a dramatic turn.

In the technical crew Nawaratne Gamage handles music while Maurice Wijesinghe sings play back. Prabath Roshan directed the camera and Saman Samarawickrema was the editor. To the production of Mohan Fernando, 'Shaun' is directed by Lucky Dias.